A Survivor's Diary

December 2012

Dee, I'm going to tell you some really intense stuff so hold tight, okay?
I went to a small high school. There were like, 250 students, give or take. Everybody knew everybody and word traveled fast. Nothing was a secret. I started my sophomore year in the fall of 2012. I was a cheerleader. I was in choir. I had amazing friends. Things were mostly great.
I met him the first day of my freshmen year. He walked into my first class of the day, Science. Instantly, I was drawn to him. I turned to my best friend, Staci. "Dibs." I had said to her. There weren't a lot of options at my school guy-wise. Everybody had already dated everybody, so fresh meat was fun.
I crushed on him for most of freshmen year. I had two other boyfriends during that time, but they aren't important. That's not what this story is about. In December of my sophomore year, after hanging out with him after school, he asked me to be his girlfriend. He was really popular and I wasn't, so it made me feel special.
I'm going to be honest, I was a prude. I definitely tried to be cool and fit in and lead him to think I would do things with him even before we dated. But anytime there was an opportunity, I told him no. Again, I was a fucking prude. That and my younger self had made a promise to save myself until I was 17. Don't know why I chose that age, but I did and I was going to keep it that way.
Things were great in the beginning. He and I used to hang out with my friends, Randi and Carah. Actually, on the weekends it was just him, me, and Carah. Usually at his or her house. We were a popular couple at school.
But things change, and fast. It kind of started with him wanting me to go down on him. I had never done that before, and I was scared. I didn't want to. I wasn't ready.
But that didn't matter to him. By that time in our relationship we were saying "I love you". Thinking back I never really loved him. But I think in every high school relationship couples say it. Every time we hung out together he made it a mission to do sexual things with me, disregarding my wishes. I said no a lot of the time, but he would then cry and threaten to kill himself. If we were at his house he would punch holes in his walls. He would tell me that sex was the only way to show someone that you love them. And me being the naive girl I was had only read about romance in novels, and that wasn't the case in any Nicholas Sparks story. I would argue with him, tell him there had to be other ways. He would throw in my face that he was humiliated that his own girlfriend wouldn't have sex with him.
I want to add that I was only 16 years old. I had very few relationships and none were even remotely serious. Nobody had informed me about domestic abuse, let alone sexual abuse. I didn't know that it was wrong. I was completely manipulated under his spell. I wish somebody had told me to run while I could.